The Things We Learn
by MirrorFade
Summary: A series of nine short stories describing the lessons Yamanaka Ino has learned over the course of her shinobi career. Some dark, some humorous. Hopefully they'll make you think. These do not take place in chronological order.
1. Chapter 1

Short and dark, and possibly AU. Enjoy

**Lesson number one: explosion tags are messy, and they don't always kill fast. Think before you throw. **

The mission had just begun, and already Ino had learned something she hadn't known before. That didn't seem right, but there it was. Maybe it was truth, or reality, or whatever the hell you wanted to call it, but all the kunoichi knew was that it had happened like she knew it was supposed it, but yet somehow hadn't expected it to.

Of course, things rarely happened like they were supposed to. Ino would have been suspicious if they did.

Screaming, god, why hadn't the man died when she hit him with it? Why had he been crying, clawing at his face, (but it wasn't his face anymore, no, no, it was his skull, his skull, and his eyes were still in it, and it was blackened, burned, and he hadn't died, why wouldn't he just fucking _die_?), and fucking _screaming_, and he wouldn't just goddamn _quit it_.

Shinobi didn't scream. It was a rule.

A minute passed. The grass turned red where it had been blackened, and somewhere, someone was crying. Yamanaka Ino simply wiped her face off, feeling how wet it was, how sticky. Blood always was. She counted herself lucky that it was no longer hot. It would have made her wonder what she looked like, had it been hot.

Eventually the screaming stopped.

Eventually she made it back home.

Later, when she was older, much older, Yamanaka Ino would tell it, her advice, her experience, to her first genin team, and then the one after that one, but no more, because two was all she survived to tell. The third, well, Hyuuga Neji had offered to take over the task after the mission Ino didn't come back from. He told them some variation of it, but Ino's version was her own.

You always learn something on missions. The only question is if you want to know what it tells you.


	2. Chapter 2

**Lesson number two: the mission is over when someone's in the morgue. Hope it isn't you. **

Tagging bodies was chuunin work because genin didn't have the stomach for it and jounin had better things to do.

Ino got stuck with it because, well, there wasn't really a good reason as to why. Someone needed to do it.

It hadn't been her mission, far from it. She hadn't taken any S-Class ones for a few weeks, anyways. The kunoichi counted herself lucky that none of hers, at least to recent memory, had turned out this bad, had gone so far into hell.

Blood on the grass, on the trees, and on the bodies, of course. Blackened and crusted upon whatever it had splattered on a day ago, when a squadron of Leaf-nin had met with a few Mist shinobi. The other details were classified, and Ino lacked the clearance to discover more, had she possessed the mind to, but she didn't. The kunoichi didn't want to know why it had happened.

She was looking at the aftermath of what had happened. The "why" wasn't important.

Dead girl with brown eyes (or eye, actually, since you couldn't call the bloody socket where the right orb should have been an _eye_), missing half her right arm and a good chunk of her neck and shoulder. Slivers of pale bone poked through the wounds, severed tendons twisting around them in some areas, hanging loose in others, and her flesh, the parts that weren't burned black, anyways, was an odd bluish-gray color. Almost like marble, but different. This wasn't pretty.

Forehead protector with the emblem of Kirigakure tied around the bloody neck. Somehow it had stayed there when its owner had gotten blown up. Enemy. The girl got burned.

Young man, eyes closed tight. There was a mass of twisted and lacerated skin and shattered bone where his jaw should have been. Dog-tags were gone, but his forehead-protector was stuffed into a pocket, along with a packet of cigarettes (mostly smoked, only four left, and no one would ever touch _those_). Konoha. Comrade, though the chuunin didn't recognize him, had never seen him before, and now she never would, would she? Not until she was dead, and the kunoichi didn't want to be dead. Not yet. Not for a long time. She wasn't like that, not like the kid, (because he was a kid, goddamn it, almost her age, maybe even younger, and that, if nothing else, scared her just a bit).

Ino burned him.

Boy with six piercing in each ear, and a shattered nose. Shards of bone, pale white and gleaming scarlet, poking through his burned and rotting skin. His eyes were closed, and Ino suspected that if she were morbid or psychotic enough to lift the cold and blue-gray lids up, she'd find nothing under them. She wasn't crazy, so she didn't try it.

A kunai was in his gut, sunken down up to the hilt wrapped with fraying bandages. There was a charm attached to it, carefully knotted so it wouldn't come loose. A piece of twine and three wooden beads. Ino tried not to look at them, at the way they swung back and forth, too much like the ornament he father had once hung in her room when she was young enough to care about such things. It was a killer's charm, and it had slaughtered someone, and painfully. There was nothing innocent about it.

No forehead protector on the shinobi. No identification. Enemy or ally, the kunoichi couldn't tell. She burned him.

Yamanaka Ino burned them all, all seven of them. Four allies, two enemies, one unknown. In death, they were treated all the same. Trash to be cleaned up by a chuunin who had no idea why she was picked for such an assignment.

In truth, she was picked because she happened to be in the immediate vicinity when the mission was ready to be assigned, though Ino didn't know that. It wouldn't have mattered if she had. There was nothing beyond that, no deeper meaning.

Death rarely had one.


	3. Chapter 3

**Lesson number three: never question the orders. Nothing you do will change then. **

It was a day when most people would feel like laughing out loud, fuck whatever the passerbyers would think, what they might say, because it was bright with sunlight, but not too bright, and it was warm, not hot, and there was just enough wind to inspire giddiness in even the most stoic of folk, but all Yamanaka Ino wanted to do right now was scream at Tsunade-sama, Godaime-Hokage, and the most respected kunoichi in the village.

"Why?" She fairly shrieked, brandishing the mission scroll. A-Rank. With a bonus to whomever chose to complete it. She should have known there was a catch. There always was, when a bonus was concerned.

Tsunade looked unperturbed at the young Jounin's antics. She had seen greater temper tantrums before, had dealt with the council members, for the sake of all that was holy. Her brown eyes were calm, voice steady. It always was, when dealing out such orders.

"It doesn't matter why. Will you take it?"

Ino hissed through clenched teeth, crushing the scroll in one balled fist. The other was curled at her side, veins pulsing angrily. "It matters to me!"

She was quieter now, though still angry. She had a right to be, dammit. Who the hell gave out missions like these? Who the hell could authorize something like this and still sleep at night, unbothered by nightmares, or at least thoughts, nagging thoughts, whispers of, _what have I done, look at my hands, the blood on them_, since shinobi weren't supposed to be bothered by such trivial things as nightmares. The real terror came when you were awake.

"Then don't take it. I have other Jounin." Tsunade took a sip of tea, at ease with her surroundings, the familiar clutter of unfinished paperwork and empty sake cups, and the occasionally kunai scattered in the further reaches of the room. This was her realm now, more than the field, though she often wished she could return to it.

The younger kunoichi before her huffed, weighed her options, and then snapped out a reply, still angry. "I thought only the enemy murdered innocents."

Sound Village seemed to be the scapegoat for everything. Ino hadn't thought about it much before, but it seemed important now. Some things only became clear when they hit you in the face.

"They are not innocent."

"They're just kids!"

"It does not matter," Tsunade repeated, voice cool, almost cold. Her eyes were like water after a cold night during the early onset of winter; they were frozen, yes, but you were a fool if you didn't see anything raging underneath the icy exterior. "Are you refusing this assignment, Yamanaka Ino?"

A pause. Breathing, hard and quick, hissing through a tight snarl. Then a sigh. Ino closed her eyes.

"I accept this mission, Godaime-sama."

Kami help her, but she was taking it. She was consenting to murder a bunch of little kids, and for what? A reason that wasn't specified, for a client whose name she didn't know. Someone wanted them dead, and Yamanaka Ino was going to make it happen.

Was this what she had become? Just a murderer, a fucking baby-killer? They never said anything about this in the Academy, never said a damn thing about killing innocents, no, never a word about that. Serve your village, your Hokage, and your people. Do what they order. Kill whom they deem worthy of such.

Don't ask questions.

Ino opened her eyes. Tsunade-sama was still there behind the desk, staring back at her with that infuriating look, the unshakable calm, that poise while she gave out such orders, such missions. The Yamanaka could almost bring herself to hate the woman now, hate the kunoichi who lead her village, who she was sworn to serve. Konoha's fifth Hokage, the Slug Woman. Tsunade-sama.

Shivering, the scroll clutched in one had, Ino turned to leave. She had reached the door, almost grasped the handle, when the Hokage's voice stopped her, brought her thoughts back on what she was going to do.

"Good luck to you."

Like this was a normal assignment. Like this day, all bright and sunny and too damn happy was going to end as it had begun for the children whose names were listed in the scroll she was carrying. Ino closed her eyes, and reached for the door.

God help her. God help them all.


	4. Chapter 4

humor, a genre I don't often wite. but we must all obey the muse, mmm?

**Lesson number four: when it comes to opponents, dead is best. Maimed only guarantees they'll be pissed off.**

The medic had already screamed at her twice and slapped her once, and Ino was vowing never to do it again, until she remembered that it was after the fact, and vows were only useful if you actually possessed the know-how to pull them off.

One might hope that they were smart enough not to make the same mistake twice, but Yamanaka Ino knew that such was rarely the case. Shinobi were just as stupid (if not more so) than everyone else, and made mistakes just as civilians did.

And, if you were to believe what the medic was muttering as he bandaged Ino's arm, shinobi were stupider, clumsier, and more suicidal than any civilian, of Konohagakure or otherwise, could ever hope to be. He said it like the fact was something the shinobi took pride in.

Ino wisely kept her mouth shut.


	5. Chapter 5

**Lesson number five: wounds are only as bad as you believe they are. **

Of all the words uttered in Konoha General Hospital, the two most hated by the medics were, "I'm fine."

So pointless and without value, without a single good point in the action of saying it. "Fine" could mean just about anything, and shinobi tended to use it when they had a graze and when they were bleeding to death from the kunai lodged in their stomach _(yeah, had a little accident. Mind patching me up? I've got a mission tomorrow. Thanks, doc.). _Medics hated that word, and a few of them had whispered about having it banned within fifty meters of the establishment.

Nothing of the sort ever happened, of course, for the Ninja Council had better things to do than arrange something that no one would ever follow, but it was a general rule, though unspoken, that one was not to say they were "fine" when asked how they were feeling.

Shame they had forgotten to mention it to Sarotobi Asuma's genin team.

They had come back from their first B-Rank, and Chouji was looking tired, Shikamaru annoyed with the graze on his forehead, Asuma-sensei rather pleased with himself and his lack of bodily harm, and Ino foolishly proud of the large laceration near her neck.

The medic had nearly fainted when he had seen just how deep it had been, and come rather close to screaming when the young kunoichi beamed up at him and proudly proclaimed that it was from a bandit's dagger, but it was fine, because she had kicked his ass, and Asuma-sensei had been proud of her, and even smiled and said that it had been a damn fine ass-kicking.

Asuma-sensei had wisely chosen to look away at the comment, attempting to look innocent with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth ten feet away from the "No Smoking!" sign.

The poor medic had been ready to rip his hair out at that point. Ino had looked at him, and blinked, a confused expression on her face. She was fine, that was all. No need to fret, because Yamanaka Ino wasn't hurt, and the cut wouldn't scar (hopefully), and even if it did, she could smile and say it was a battle-wound, because it was. Asuma-sensei said it was.

Ino didn't find out until later how close she'd come to dying. A few more centimeters, and then, and then Asuma-sensei wouldn't have smiled at her, wouldn't have been able to tell his student how damn proud of her he was, and then Ino's father, well, they wouldn't have gone out to dinner later, and he wouldn't have toasted her, and called her his little warrior. A few centimeters deeper, and Yamanaka Ino wouldn't have come home at all.

She would have been dead, one of the many shinobi who died too young, who were gone before they could really live.

Yamanaka Ino didn't find out until she was a Chuunin that she had almost died after her first B-rank as a genin.

She really hadn't been fine.


	6. Chapter 6

**Lesson number six: the game is only murder if you think of it that way. Don't.**

It was ten minutes after the mission had gone to hell, but Yamanaka Ino was glad of that, because it wasn't her team that was suddenly contemplating their untimely and quite possibly painful demise. No, it was the Bad Guys, the other squad, the Oto-nin, all three of them, since the fourth was missing his head, and the fifth was missing a few other parts, and the survivors were beginning to tire when Ino had just finished warming up.

There was a kunoichi occupying Shikamaru, but her movements were wild, uncoordinated, and there, yes, right there, her left flank was open, and her guard was down, and now she was screaming as a kunai found her side, right above her hip, and another her neck, and then there was no noise from her.

Neji wasn't her concern, since the Hyuuga had never wanted any help, least of all from Ino, and would become prissy if it was given. She could almost hear the thuds as a chakra-charged palm slammed into someone, and almost heard the gasp and liquid cough as someone died, but not really, since she wasn't paying attention to what was happening directly to her right.

Hers was the last one standing, and he wasn't standing anymore, since she'd severed his hamstrings, and Ino found it was almost amusing, in a sick and twisted way her mind didn't normally operate in, to watch him trying to stand. He wouldn't. She'd kill him before he figured out how to. But this…this was nice. Payback. Make the Sound-Bastard squirm a bit before she slaughtered him.

She smiled a little, flicking a few drops of blood off her nose as she sauntered over, putting a bit of a sway in her hips, making him look at her, despite his pain, just because she wanted to, and because it was working, and therefore she could.

Yamanaka Ino could do whatever the hell she wanted to do right now.

This wasn't murder, she thought later, smiling through the scarlet coating her face. This was fair. This was justice. This was revenge, for all that Otogakure had ever done to Konoha, to Ino's friends and family, her comrades, her dear battle-mates. This wasn't wrong, because it felt too right to be that.

It wasn't murder. Not this. Not at all.


	7. Chapter 7

**Lesson number seven: don't cry. For anyone. Ever. **

There was a rule written about it, and for the most part, Konoha shinobi followed it. Never cry. Never shed a tear, unless it's crimson, and try not to die if it's the latter.

Show no emotions? That assumed that they were cold enough to pretend they weren't human. All too often shinobi were reminded of their shortcomings, and that was the most common of them all. A true weapon is thoughtless; not cruel, because you need a mind to be considered such, and steel doesn't possess one, but not kind either, because a kunai is meant for killing, and shuriken meant for destruction, and even when blunted, they are still deadly, as the Academy instructors are forever telling their students.

The assignment had been fine, better than fine, even, until Yamanaka Ino went to the hospital to visit her squadron commander who'd been admitted earlier, and was given directions to the morgue.

"But he was fine," she had protested to the medic. "He was fine."

The shinobi (no way he was a civilian, not with eyes that hard), shook his head slowly and given her the news. _Internal bleeding, bad, we tried, damn it, we tried, but it was too late, too much blood, and he just died. _

I'm sorry.

Ino hadn't said anything, even when the man had pressed the clicking dogtags into her palm, and offered to walk her out, an invitation she refused. The kunoichi, feeling the metal tags digging into her skin, the kanji spelling out her captain's name, registration number, and blood type, information that was now useless to anyone other than the bastard who got stuck with the task of body-disposal, had shivered.

The metal was surprisingly warm.

Ino's tears were surprisingly cold.

Such were the emotional displays of professional kunoichi. They might not be able to forget they were human, but they could come damn close. If you had to break the rule, than you did it in the smallest way as possible. Anything else was unacceptable.


	8. Chapter 8

**Lesson number eight: always come back. We don't want to do your paperwork if you die. **

She'd discovered a long while back that if a mission had even the smallest chance of going to hell, no matter the rank or who had your back, (it could be a D-rank with the fucking Yondaime, but no, it wouldn't have changed a thing), then it would most likely do so.

Sometimes it sucked to be a kunoichi.

Like when one leg was broken and the other was twitching erratically, and you had a sinking suspicion that it had something to do with the senbon imbedded in your thigh, and your teammate, who never showed much in the way of facial expressions, had set his mouth in a thin line, then you knew you were fucked.

Yamanaka Ino knew they were screwed. The only question was how long it would take the rogue Suna-nin to kill them. From the way they were leering, the jounin had a feeling, and it wasn't a nice feeling either, that it might take a while.

Just a thought.

And then her head was on the ground, sand getting into her hair, and she missed the feel of grass, because there wasn't any here, so far from home, and Ino didn't want to die here, so far away from the forests of Konohagakure, but there was a grin above her, thin, chapped lips that moved back to reveal rotting and broken teeth, and she remembered that she was a fighter, and a shinobi, and such people didn't die so easily.

Kunoichi of the Village Hidden in the Leaves didn't die like this, with sand in their hair and senbon in their thighs.

They simply didn't. Things didn't work like that.

The mission had gone to hell, and they'd almost died, Ino with a broken leg and internal bleeding from a nasty but thankfully well-known poison, and Hyuuga Neji from the Katon blast that had hit him in the side and burned his eyebrows off, not to mention a good portion of his skin. The medics said they could fix the worst of it; he wouldn't loose the eye like they had first thought he would.

The kunoichi was thankful they were alive. She hadn't wanted to go out in Sunagakure, where the sun was harsh and the water scarce, if it was there at all, the climate so very different from the one she'd been born knowing, the one she'd trained in, fought in, and would eventually die in.

Missions would go to hell, but they'd make it back. They always did, until they couldn't, but that was how things went. You couldn't avoid them all, though in the end, there was the comforting thought that some poor chuunin would have to file the paperwork, and you could laugh at them from wherever you happened to end up.

A small thing, but it was something nonetheless. Better to go out laughing than screaming, anyways.


	9. Chapter 9

**Lesson number nine: give up when you have to. Unless you'd rather be dead, and then by all means continue. **

They called it a great many things. Disobedience. Insubordination. Disloyalty. Stupidity.

Among other things.

Whatever name you wanted to slap on it, Yamanaka Ino was close enough to committing it that she could nearly smell the blood and hear the angry screeches of the squadron commander, and almost moved, almost went for it, but Neji's hand on her shoulder held her back.

He didn't say anything, but instead gave her a hard look, rain dripping off his pale face, the cut on his cheek bleeding, and white eyes nearly pulsing with the strength of his bloodline-limit. He never did say a great deal, but then, he didn't often need to. Actions and gestures seemed to convey his meanings well enough. It did make you wonder just what went through his head, how his thought process worked. Ino never could figure out Neji, no matter how hard she tried (and because she was a kunoichi, that was pretty damn hard, thank you very much).

Hyuuga were creepy like that.

The rain was hard enough to make conditions miserable, and almost cause the shinobi to shiver, but they contained it, because they were Jounin and therefore above such actions, and wonder if someone on the mission-staff hated them. Really, really hated them. As in the way Uchiha Sasuke hated his brother, only ten times worse and then some.

But it wasn't coming down hard enough to mask the sound their boots made when they moved (boots instead of sandals, because once you've seen someone's toes hacked off, then you'll understand just fine), and therefore making the Konoha fighters a hell of a lot more miserable, and the targets that much warier. You couldn't achieve the required amount of stealth to pull off a successful massacre when your targets heard you coming from fifty meters out.

Ino had stopped asking why they did such assignments, opting instead to tell herself that it was for a good cause. The paycheck would buy her a new set of kunai, and a few rounds of good beer after she got herself a decent haircut. The assignment would give Neji a new katana and Tenten's birthday gift and the captain her rent, which was two months overdue.

The money generated by this assignment would give them all something, and whatever it was, well, it was enough. Enough to make them justify murdering then civilian merchants trudging through the mud below them. Only they weren't merchants. Ex-shinobi acting as merchants. Traitors of Konoha, they'd been on the run five years.

Five years was a long time. ANBU had been busy. Tsunade-sama had bigger things to concentrate on, but it had been done. Finally. Ino wondered, Neji's hand still on her shoulder, tugging on her vest, if they were still following the murder's path. If maybe they hadn't simply given it up, become the merchants they were pretending to be. She wondered such things for a moment, but then dismissed them, looking to her comrade and his powerful, viselike grip, almost glaring at him until he dropped it.

He always knew when to back off. Ino almost hated his control, because it reminded her of the moments when she lost her own.

"We wait," he said coolly, eyes hard. They were activated, veins pulsing on the sides of his skull. Creepy, but she'd been around him so much that she could almost ignore them. Almost, like the way you could pretend removing someone's heart from their chest was a routine action, even though it was hot and sticky, and even if it wasn't pulsing, you could feel it moving, even though it wasn't, and still grin that cocky smile, and say, "yeah, normal day."

You could pretend, but it always got to you.

She glared, and looked away, jaw clenched. Yeah, they'd wait. Save the prospect of dying for a few more hours, until the mud stopped being so damn loud. They'd wait.

The squadron commander didn't comment on Yamanaka Ino's almost-insubordination. Veterans rarely did.

Finished at the moment, but I might come back and add more. Maybe.


End file.
